New Projects

So, the walking project made it two days!

No, I haven't disbanded that idea but things just didn't work out for us to take a walk tonight, that's all.

We did go out Saturday evening though. Walked down the street this time instead of up the road. Just for a tiny bit of variety in our little tour.

We walked about a half-mile probably down the road from the house -to a short distance after the paved road ends. We would have walked a little bit further but Mandy spied something in the bushes alongside of the road and it spooked her.

Here''s what she saw!
At first glance, this just looks like a big ball of brush but Mandy was sure she saw it move and that frightened her. I walked a little closer and identified what it was to which she began to berate herself for not having brought her cellphone And then, I reached in my pocket and whipped out MY camera so all was fine and dandy then and we got this picture and the one below.
I hope these pictures of this fat old porcupine didn't scare anyone. The second photo -of it moving away from the brush alongside of the road shows his behind to be pretty bald. Anyone have any clues as to why that might be?

Saturday afternoon though, I'd just managed to get Kurtis down for a nap when this really loud -and trust me, I do mean REALLY LOUD -noise was out on the road in front of our house. The bane of our summers here.

FOUR-WHEELERS!

These people really do tick me off -a lot! From Friday evening thru Sunday evening, just about every weekend now since the end of April, we have been blessed (NOT) with people riding their damned four-wheelers up and down this road in front of our house.

Our street is paved down about a half-mile (if that) beyond our house and then, it is a dirt road which goes on down to Peale -the local ghost town -and from there, it winds up the mountain, called Tunnelside, and over to the old railroad station, Gorton, and from there, if you can follow the right dirt road and not get lost in all the stripping roads back in there, it will take you across Black Moshannon Creek and on into the little village of Moshannon in Centre County.

The four-wheelers love to ride around down there, following all the various roads and trails and there is a "Rails-to-Trails" segment too which is what once upon a time, many years ago, was the trackage of the Beech Creek Railroad system.

I probably wouldn't mind these people as much as I do if they wouldn't race past here going really, really fast and with the throttles running full-out and making such a horrid racket as most of them tend to do. Not only is the noise really disruptive -often wakes Kurtis up, but they are so noisy that you can't hear the sound on the TV set even if you have it kicked up about as high as it will go plus, if you happen to be trying to have a conversation on the phone, it is next to impossible to hear a thing then.

Those things, plus the fact that it is ILLEGAL to ride those damned things on a highway and after a good six weeks of hearing this every freaking weekend, when this happened -again- yesterday afternoon, I figured "Here we go again -our music for the weekend is starting up!" Only this time, I called the State Police and logged in a complaint about this.

If the kids would happen to be out in the yard, even though they are never outside unless one of the adults here -or Katie -is out there with them -it would be so easy for one, or even both of them, to slip away and be up on the road, where THEY don't belong either and at the speeds these idiots travel, they could very easily be hit and badly injured or worse! Or, that could also cause the driver to lose control and crash along the street -injuring only him/herself but still, who needs that kind of irritation and worry.

Another thing that really tightens my jaws about these people is that frequently they run up and down this road (up to the bar, stay there a little while, then back down to the woods) all day long as well as even running out here until as late as 2 and 3 a.m.!

Since last Labor Day weekend, there have been five fatalities in our little township -all people riding on four-wheelers! Maybe I shouldn't complain to the police and just let them keep racing and chasing and drinking as they run, and eventually more of them will be in fatal accidents and eliminate my problem with them all by themselves. Do ya think I should let 'em do that?

Well, frankly, as much as they do tick me off, I really don't want to see any of them wreck, injure themselves or someone else much less watch and wait to see how long it takes for an ambulance or two -a life flight unit to be called in too -to take who ever is injured off to the hospital.

I just want them to try to exercise a little bit of common sense and have some respect for those of us who live here, who have to hear all the noise of their engines running full tilt, who have to live in fear on the weekends that one or several of them will collide with a car, a child, land in my front yard or my neighbors, or worse!

The trooper on the desk when I called said they would set up a 30-day surveillance in this area to try to curb this activity. Okay, fine with me -just do SOMETHING, please!

And then, the strangest thing happened. After I made that phone call, it was almost like they had my phone line tapped or something because after that, we only had about 8 four-wheelers go by here the rest of the day and into the night and a string of motorcycles -about 12 -that whizzed by, one time! And today, we had only a handful of bikers and four-wheelers out riding down this way.

But you better believe, I am going to be watching -and counting -and listing whether they were racing or riding at a reasonable speed considering there are people of all ages who live along this street and I know I am not the only resident here who has been very upset by their antics. And if they start being obnoxious, I'm calling the gendarmes again -and again -and again -until they either round 'em all up or they get the message somehow and leave our street alone!

Today Katie left to go to Cincinnati, Ohio for the week to work there with our Youth Ministry group, helping people there with simple repairs and such to their homes. This is the fourth year (if I have my numbers right) that our Youth Minsitry group has participated in this program. One year they went to North Carolina, another year, I remember they went to someplace up in Maine. If there was another trip, I don't recall now where that one was right now -so maybe this is only our third year of doing this.

But anyway, it's a darned good program -for the kids as well as for the benefit of those they try to help out too! Makes for a great way for the kids to garner some of the points they need for community service work towards their graduation requirements too -along with giving them a chance to see a few other parts of the country at the same tiime.

This year, our group joined forces with the Lutheran church from Karthaus (Shepherd of the Hills) in participating in this trip so I think they had somewhere between 20-25 people going on this community service event. (That number includes adults too.)

Our next-door neighbor, Deb, is one of the leaders of the Youth Ministry so she and her younger daughter were going, along with our minister, Pastor Carrie and a couple from the Karthaus church as supervisors of the kids.

Today, I started -and finished too -a project I volunteered to help out with for the Pennsylvania Geneological group. A gentleman who is a member of that group sent me a cd and instructions on how to transcribe death records from the files at our county courthouse and then, when I had the files he sent me finished, I just e-mailed the completed transcripts back to him and he will then post them on the PAGEN website for people interested in family tree research -or other historical data -can then access them and search for members of their family tree there. It was fun but also really challenging to try to read the pennmanship of those who recorded these records a hundred years ago -plus the copy was often really blurry, difficult to read at times. But still, I enjoyed doing it, and got the files under the letter "I" for our county from about 1895 through 1904 transcribed.

One other thing too -totally unrelated to anything above though -is that Maya and Kurtis both love when I'm reading posts from my reader and someone has posted a video there on their blog. Music -they enjoy and they really love and go bonkers laughing when someone posts a new LOLCATS video too.

Well, yesterday -one of my favorite bloggers -Shelby Dupree down in Alabama happened to post a video of Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, singing "Ring of Fire." When the music started to play, Kurtis stopped whatever he was doing and came running over to me, crawled up in my lap and watched that video like he was mezmerized by it! He was even tapping his fingers on his little leg in time to the beat too.

And when they sang the very last line -"Burn, burn, burn" and repeated it and the sound cut off, Kurtis looked up at me and said "Burn, burn, burn" and it almost sounded like he even had a tiny bit of the melody too!

Maybe we've got two budding musicians here, huh?

Whatever though, I'm glad they like the same music that Grammy and Mommy like at any rate though!

Can't go wrong with good old Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson, can ya?